What Recovery?

Another implosion bomb is set to hit American workers. The public sector, which has been one bright spot for decent wages and benefits, is about to shed tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, park employees, utility workers, and others from state and local governments, sending our country in exactly the wrong direction.

Yet economists are cheerfully bandying around the most moronic oxymoron I’ve ever heard. They are exulting that we’re experiencing a “jobless recovery.”

I don’t see how their minds can put those two words together without having their heads explode. Excuse me, Einsteins, but there’s no such thing. You can spin your data ’til the cows come home, but an economy that has nearly 20 percent of the workforce either unemployed or underemployed, that has no plan for replacing the eight million jobs we lost in the last two years, that is now proceeding with mass layoffs of such essential workers as teachers and firefighters, and that is willing to accept poverty pay as the new American norm is not by any stretch of the imagination in a recovery.

There is, of course, a way to avert this economic disaster. It’s called leadership. Stop talking about a green economy and put Americans to work building it.

This is but an excerpt from Jim Hightower’s column in our September issue. To read the full article, and to subscribe to The Progressive for just $14.97 (a 75% discount!), simply click here.